12 The Agricultural Holdings (^England) Act, 1883. 
The question is how to reduce the words of the Act into prac- 
tice. Lawyers may well give up such a task in despair. It is 
a question from which Courts of Law, if they have any option, 
will shrink instinctively, declaring it, with one assent, to be a 
question for reference to experts. Yet, if experts themselves 
differ, we may be sure that, in one form or other, the Courts will 
have to puzzle out this question for themselves, and construct 
some general principle out of facts and evidence laid before 
them by experts. 
To an outsider it would appear that each case must differ 
from nearly every other ; that landlords can contribute no data 
for a sound decision ; and that the only certain materials for 
such a decision are those which tenants can furnish in dates and 
details of outlay, and its results, as tested by the actual condition 
of any improvement made upon the surface, and by the condition 
of the land and crops in proof of what remains for the incoming 
tenant of money sunk in the soil. We turn again to the trained 
valuers, who must determine what deduction should be made 
from the sum so found to represent the landlord's share in right 
of the inherent capabilities of the soil. Upon this point I 
cannot do better than quote the opinion of Mr. T. S. Woolley, 
a surveyor and land-valuer of great experience, in his opening 
address as President of the Surveyors' Institution * : — 
" Apart from points of doubtful construction, and the grievous 
absence of guarantees against fraudulent claims for imaginary 
improvements which characterize the Act, I do not myself an- 
ticipate that any cases of serious difficulty or very great injus- 
tice will arise under it, except in relation to the question what 
proportion of any given amount of improved value is due to the 
intrinsic or inherent qualities of the soil, I say frankly that, 
notwithstanding the experience I have acquired during the 
assiduous practice of my profession for well-nigh half a century, 
I distrust my own power of determining it with anything like 
perfect certainty. This would be true even in cases in which 
the amount of the improved value had been approximately 
ascertained ; that problem itself being absolutely incapable of 
solution, except on the impossible assumption that every one 
concerned approached the consideration of it with full knowledge 
of the facts and perfect freedom from bias, to say nothing of 
dishonest intentions. Having spoken with such candour of my 
own shortcomings, I venture to express, with equal plainness of 
speech, my absolute conviction that most of the existing class of 
tenant-right valuers, by whom those questions will presumably 
have to be dealt with, are at least as ill-qualified to deal fairly 
♦ Vol. xvi. ' TransactionB,' Part I. ; November 12th, 1883. 
